TRADE IN HUMAN FLESH.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13905, 2 December 1910, Page 7

TRADE IN HUMAN FLESH.

Tlio recruiting of Angola natives for the Sao Thome cocoa plantations will honcefor-Lt be entrusted to Government administration instead of to private agents. In urging the British Government to see that the slavery in Portuguese West Africa is put down by the new Portuguese Government, the "Spectator" says:—"At this very moment — as we write these words—there are long strings of miserable men, women and children slowly toiling through the hinterland of Portugese West Africa, with the slave-hunter's and slavedriver's wooden yokes round their necks. "When some wretched creature in the slave gang shows signs of dropping down through exhaustion, he or she, child or grown-up, man or woman, is flogged as no man would dare to flog a horse in England. If this tails, and the attempt to keep the wretched creature on his legs is clearly hopeless, he is shot then and there, and his body left to be eaten by the wolves and vultures. This may seem a waste of powder, but a little reflection will showthat it is absolutely necessary, given that the slave-raider's ftnngs are ever to reach the coast. If men cotild get out of they. chain-gangs by shamming exhaustion, the caravans would soon wither away. . . . When the enslaved people reach tho coast they undergo the pleasant 'official' transformation of being called 'contracted labourers,' and of signing a contract for labour on tho islands, with all sorts of humane clauses as to repatriation. Otherwise their status is unaltered. They aro then placed upon the slaver steamers— which, to our shame, pass British warships untouched —and are deported to the islands, whence they never return."